Connecticut pastor Jason Coker was one of several speakers at the New Baptist Covenant, a movement launched by former President Jimmy Carter seeking to make Baptists in the U.S. better known for what unites rather than divides them.

By Bob Allen

Racial reconciliation can occur not only between individuals but also by way of transforming mission partnerships, a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship pastor said Jan. 15 at a conference for diverse Baptist groups in Atlanta.

Jason Coker, pastor of Wilton Baptist Church in Wilton, Conn., described Delta Hands for Hope, a rural poverty initiative he started in his hometown of Shaw, Miss., as “a center of transformation” in a panel discussion at the Jan. 14-15 New Baptist Covenant Summit on the campus of Emory University.

“We don’t need outside groups to come in and help us,” Coker explained. “We need folks to work with us, because there are incredible leaders in Shaw, Mississippi, that have been doing good work for decades. We want to introduce these incredible leaders to other incredible leaders from all over the country.”

Coker, recorder for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, started the ministry as a way to give back to the Mississippi Delta community that nurtured him as one of the few poor white kids in a public school system that is overwhelmingly black.

Early on, Coker arranged a meeting of black and white community leaders to map assets. It was one of the most integrated gatherings in Shaw’s history, he said, and one of the first times that members of the two groups were able to see themselves as equal partners in building a better future for the children of their community.

Volunteer mission teams from First Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, traveled to Shaw to help out with projects like downtown beautification. While working side-by-side with residents, Pastor Leroy Woods of the Rock of Ages Missionary Baptist Church in Shaw and a member of the Delta Hands for Hope mentioned his church was considering a mission trip and asked if volunteers could come to Waco to help with their local missions projects.

“Now we have mission teams coming out of Shaw, but also understanding that it starts in Shaw,” Coker said.

Chance meeting

One of the most surprising partnerships, Coker said, began with his chance meeting of a stranger in town who introduced herself as a member of the Presentation Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the process of opening a tutoring center for small children in Shaw.

“These three retired nuns from Ireland felt God called them to rural poverty in Shaw, Mississippi,” Coker said. “They bought a house in Shaw and moved to Shaw and opened a tutoring center because they felt God called them to do it. They are one of our primary partners in Shaw.”

“The Presentation Sisters are just incredible human beings,” he said. “We started crying in that little drug store about if God’s calling three nuns from Ireland to Shaw, Mississippi, we’ve got to be a part of that.”

Coker said transformation in Shaw is happening in all kinds of ways. Local pastors are excited, and so are the local schools. Churches in the surrounding area are coming to Shaw. The churches in Shaw are working together in a way they never have before, and racial reconciliation is happening in the process.

A couple of years ago, Coker said, the white Methodist Church agreed to open its building for a community-wide Vacation Bible School. After generations of exclusion, the African-American community was “Christian enough” to accept the offer.

“For the first time in the history of the town there is an integrated Vacation Bible School,” Coker said. “The Shaw Baptist Church hasn’t come around yet, but they’re the only church in town who is not a part of Delta Hands for Hope. White churches and black churches in other communities are coming together. Racial reconciliation is happening in the process of this focus on children.”

Covenants of action

The New Baptist Covenant began with a 2008 "Celebration of the New Baptist Covenant" spearheaded by former President Jimmy Carter in an effort to unify Baptists across the United States across lines of race, theology and geography. Last year the movement entered a second phase with “covenants of action” pairing white and black churches together for joint missions projects in select U.S. cities. More than 20 such partnerships are on the drawing board in 2015.

Asked during a Q&A about people or churches that don’t want to be transformed, Coker told a story about an early mission project in Shaw that involved painting over graffiti on the back of the library.

“This guy comes up to me and goes, ‘Hey boy, you know all these kids around here are just going to vandalize it,’” he recounted. “I said ‘OK,’ then I kind of leaned into him, and I go, ‘I have more paint than they do.’”

“I was like, there is nobody in Shaw who will buy more paint than we will,” Coker said. “There’s the hard-headed insistence that we are going to do good, and we’re going to be more hard-headed about doing good than anybody can be hard-headed about doing bad. And we have more resources to be hard-headed.”

“There’s going to be some people who don’t like transformation,” Coker said. “There’s going to be this ‘we don’t want to do that’ and all this, but we will focus on the good and forge ahead, making as many partners as we can, but we will not relent to bad and evil. We will not bend. That is a commitment we made early on.”

Connecticut pastor Jason Coker was one of several speakers at the New Baptist Covenant, a movement launched by former President Jimmy Carter seeking to make Baptists in the U.S. better known for what unites rather than divides them.

By Bob Allen

Racial reconciliation can occur not only between individuals but also by way of transforming mission partnerships, a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship pastor said Jan. 15 at a conference for diverse Baptist groups in Atlanta.

Jason Coker, pastor of Wilton Baptist Church in Wilton, Conn., described Delta Hands for Hope, a rural poverty initiative he started in his hometown of Shaw, Miss., as “a center of transformation” in a panel discussion at the Jan. 14-15 New Baptist Covenant Summit on the campus of Emory University.

“We don’t need outside groups to come in and help us,” Coker explained. “We need folks to work with us, because there are incredible leaders in Shaw, Mississippi, that have been doing good work for decades. We want to introduce these incredible leaders to other incredible leaders from all over the country.”

Coker, recorder for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, started the ministry as a way to give back to the Mississippi Delta community that nurtured him as one of the few poor white kids in a public school system that is overwhelmingly black.

Early on, Coker arranged a meeting of black and white community leaders to map assets. It was one of the most integrated gatherings in Shaw’s history, he said, and one of the first times that members of the two groups were able to see themselves as equal partners in building a better future for the children of their community.

Volunteer mission teams from First Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, traveled to Shaw to help out with projects like downtown beautification. While working side-by-side with residents, Pastor Leroy Woods of the Rock of Ages Missionary Baptist Church in Shaw and a member of the Delta Hands for Hope mentioned his church was considering a mission trip and asked if volunteers could come to Waco to help with their local missions projects.

“Now we have mission teams coming out of Shaw, but also understanding that it starts in Shaw,” Coker said.

Chance meeting

One of the most surprising partnerships, Coker said, began with his chance meeting of a stranger in town who introduced herself as a member of the Presentation Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the process of opening a tutoring center for small children in Shaw.

“These three retired nuns from Ireland felt God called them to rural poverty in Shaw, Mississippi,” Coker said. “They bought a house in Shaw and moved to Shaw and opened a tutoring center because they felt God called them to do it. They are one of our primary partners in Shaw.”

“The Presentation Sisters are just incredible human beings,” he said. “We started crying in that little drug store about if God’s calling three nuns from Ireland to Shaw, Mississippi, we’ve got to be a part of that.”

Coker said transformation in Shaw is happening in all kinds of ways. Local pastors are excited, and so are the local schools. Churches in the surrounding area are coming to Shaw. The churches in Shaw are working together in a way they never have before, and racial reconciliation is happening in the process.

A couple of years ago, Coker said, the white Methodist Church agreed to open its building for a community-wide Vacation Bible School. After generations of exclusion, the African-American community was “Christian enough” to accept the offer.

“For the first time in the history of the town there is an integrated Vacation Bible School,” Coker said. “The Shaw Baptist Church hasn’t come around yet, but they’re the only church in town who is not a part of Delta Hands for Hope. White churches and black churches in other communities are coming together. Racial reconciliation is happening in the process of this focus on children.”

Covenants of action

The New Baptist Covenant began with a 2008 "Celebration of the New Baptist Covenant" spearheaded by former President Jimmy Carter in an effort to unify Baptists across the United States across lines of race, theology and geography. Last year the movement entered a second phase with “covenants of action” pairing white and black churches together for joint missions projects in select U.S. cities. More than 20 such partnerships are on the drawing board in 2015.

Asked during a Q&A about people or churches that don’t want to be transformed, Coker told a story about an early mission project in Shaw that involved painting over graffiti on the back of the library.

“This guy comes up to me and goes, ‘Hey boy, you know all these kids around here are just going to vandalize it,’” he recounted. “I said ‘OK,’ then I kind of leaned into him, and I go, ‘I have more paint than they do.’”

“I was like, there is nobody in Shaw who will buy more paint than we will,” Coker said. “There’s the hard-headed insistence that we are going to do good, and we’re going to be more hard-headed about doing good than anybody can be hard-headed about doing bad. And we have more resources to be hard-headed.”

“There’s going to be some people who don’t like transformation,” Coker said. “There’s going to be this ‘we don’t want to do that’ and all this, but we will focus on the good and forge ahead, making as many partners as we can, but we will not relent to bad and evil. We will not bend. That is a commitment we made early on.”

The aim is a “covenant community” characterized by “creative and redemptive agitation,” Atlanta pastor Raphael Warnock says at the kickoff of the New Baptist Covenant Summit.

By Bob Allen

The current pastor of the spiritual home of Martin Luther King Jr. challenged a movement called the New Baptist Covenant to move beyond comfort zones of race and theology toward a “covenant community” characterized by “creative and redemptive agitation” necessary for substantive change.

Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, closed the opening worship session of the Jan. 14-15 New Baptist Covenant Summit in Atlanta with a sermon using the analogy of an oyster, irritated by a grain of sand, ending in the production of a precious pearl.

“There are no pearls without agitation, without irritation, without aggravation,” Warnock said. “As we gather these couple of days, my prayer is that God grant us the courage to get under each other’s skin, to have honest dialogue, holy irritation, to push and be pushed until the Pearl of Great Price that’s genuine transformative community — not tokenism but real community — emerges among us.”

Warnock said there is nothing religious people enjoy more than their comfort zone, but reminded his audience that “Jesus comes to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.”

“God’s plan is bigger than our clan, bigger than our nation, bigger than our tradition, bigger than our church,” he said. “The things that matter so much to us mean very little to God.”

Warnock described the New Baptist Covenant, an initiative by former President Jimmy Carter started in 2007 to find common ground for Baptists in the United States divided by race, theology and geography, as a “harbinger of hope” that “bears witness to God’s Kingdom and view of love and justice that portends the realization of what Dr. King called the Beloved Community.”

Among many problems facing the nation, Warnock said, racism is still “America’s original sin and its most intractable social evil.”

“Dr. King used to say that 11 a.m. Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America, and the degree to which that is still true suggests that despite our anthems, our preachments, our creeds, I have a sneaking suspicion that our sociology is far more important than our theology,” he said.

“Our sociology is far more instructive and far more determinative about what we actually do than our theology. When we gather on Sunday, we ought to at least ask ourselves, particularly if the gathering is utterly homogeneous, we ought to ask ourselves, ‘What brought us here, sociology or theology?’”

One test of whether the church is a “comfort zone” or a “covenant of community,” Warnock said, is “Do we have the courage and do we love one another to get under each other’s skin?”

“That is not an easy question,” he said, “because addressing the issue of race is about far more than standing together on a Sunday morning, or even a Wednesday afternoon, and singing Kum Ba Yah” but also asking hard questions that penetrate beneath the surface.

Warnock said that truth is no more evident than in America’s criminal justice system.

“When we consider the meaning of our commitment and our covenant to one another, surely we must ask ourselves what does that witness look like and sound like — what ought we to be doing right now — in an American moment when the racial contradictions in our criminal justice system are deeper and wider in their impact than they were before the civil rights movement?” he said.

Warnock said during Dr. King’s lifetime and ministry, no one could have imagined a “burgeoning and bulging prison industrial complex that continues unabated regardless of actual crime rates, across Republican and Democratic administrations, over the last 30 years.”

“America has a greater percentage of its black population in prison than in South Africa at the height of apartheid,” he said. “We warehouse more people than anybody, including the regimes whose human rights records we love to hate. We’ve got North Korea beat. The land of the free has become the incarceration capital of the world. What does it mean for Baptists to come together in that context?”

Warnock said that is the reason young people are wearing T-shirts with the last words of an African-American man who died in police custody repeating the phrase, “I can’t breathe.”

“Wall Street bankers come to destroy the wealth of millions of American families, almost caused our entire economy to sink into the abyss, and not one banker went to prison,” he said. “Eric Garner was accused of selling a few loose cigarettes on a street corner, and had his life choked out of him. God is not pleased.”

“If we do not stand with him, our Christian witness has no real credibility, no matter how harmonious our anthems,” Warnock said.

]]>

The aim is a “covenant community” characterized by “creative and redemptive agitation,” Atlanta pastor Raphael Warnock says at the kickoff of the New Baptist Covenant Summit.

By Bob Allen

The current pastor of the spiritual home of Martin Luther King Jr. challenged a movement called the New Baptist Covenant to move beyond comfort zones of race and theology toward a “covenant community” characterized by “creative and redemptive agitation” necessary for substantive change.

Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, closed the opening worship session of the Jan. 14-15 New Baptist Covenant Summit in Atlanta with a sermon using the analogy of an oyster, irritated by a grain of sand, ending in the production of a precious pearl.

“There are no pearls without agitation, without irritation, without aggravation,” Warnock said. “As we gather these couple of days, my prayer is that God grant us the courage to get under each other’s skin, to have honest dialogue, holy irritation, to push and be pushed until the Pearl of Great Price that’s genuine transformative community — not tokenism but real community — emerges among us.”

Warnock said there is nothing religious people enjoy more than their comfort zone, but reminded his audience that “Jesus comes to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.”

“God’s plan is bigger than our clan, bigger than our nation, bigger than our tradition, bigger than our church,” he said. “The things that matter so much to us mean very little to God.”

Warnock described the New Baptist Covenant, an initiative by former President Jimmy Carter started in 2007 to find common ground for Baptists in the United States divided by race, theology and geography, as a “harbinger of hope” that “bears witness to God’s Kingdom and view of love and justice that portends the realization of what Dr. King called the Beloved Community.”

Among many problems facing the nation, Warnock said, racism is still “America’s original sin and its most intractable social evil.”

“Dr. King used to say that 11 a.m. Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America, and the degree to which that is still true suggests that despite our anthems, our preachments, our creeds, I have a sneaking suspicion that our sociology is far more important than our theology,” he said.

“Our sociology is far more instructive and far more determinative about what we actually do than our theology. When we gather on Sunday, we ought to at least ask ourselves, particularly if the gathering is utterly homogeneous, we ought to ask ourselves, ‘What brought us here, sociology or theology?’”

One test of whether the church is a “comfort zone” or a “covenant of community,” Warnock said, is “Do we have the courage and do we love one another to get under each other’s skin?”

“That is not an easy question,” he said, “because addressing the issue of race is about far more than standing together on a Sunday morning, or even a Wednesday afternoon, and singing Kum Ba Yah” but also asking hard questions that penetrate beneath the surface.

Warnock said that truth is no more evident than in America’s criminal justice system.

“When we consider the meaning of our commitment and our covenant to one another, surely we must ask ourselves what does that witness look like and sound like — what ought we to be doing right now — in an American moment when the racial contradictions in our criminal justice system are deeper and wider in their impact than they were before the civil rights movement?” he said.

Warnock said during Dr. King’s lifetime and ministry, no one could have imagined a “burgeoning and bulging prison industrial complex that continues unabated regardless of actual crime rates, across Republican and Democratic administrations, over the last 30 years.”

“America has a greater percentage of its black population in prison than in South Africa at the height of apartheid,” he said. “We warehouse more people than anybody, including the regimes whose human rights records we love to hate. We’ve got North Korea beat. The land of the free has become the incarceration capital of the world. What does it mean for Baptists to come together in that context?”

Warnock said that is the reason young people are wearing T-shirts with the last words of an African-American man who died in police custody repeating the phrase, “I can’t breathe.”

“Wall Street bankers come to destroy the wealth of millions of American families, almost caused our entire economy to sink into the abyss, and not one banker went to prison,” he said. “Eric Garner was accused of selling a few loose cigarettes on a street corner, and had his life choked out of him. God is not pleased.”

“If we do not stand with him, our Christian witness has no real credibility, no matter how harmonious our anthems,” Warnock said.

Top leaders in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship endorsed Black Lives Matter Sunday, a campaign mourning the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner during worship services Sunday, Dec. 14, sponsored by the Progressive National Baptist Convention.

“We invite the Fellowship to stand in solidarity with our African-American Baptist sisters and brothers bearing witness through prayer and vigil this Sunday,” CBF Executive Coordinator Suzii Paynter and Moderator Kasey Jones said in a statement Dec. 11.

Paynter, who is white, and Jones, an African-American, said the 1,800-church Fellowship is committed to pursuing racial reconciliation through “covenants of action” pairing black and white congregations in hands-on mission projects through the New Baptist Covenant, a network that includes both the CBF and the PNBC spearheaded by former President Jimmy Carter.

Paynter and Jones, who serves as senior pastor at National Baptist Memorial Church in Washington, encouraged Fellowship Baptists to consider attending the upcoming New Baptist Covenant Summit, Jan. 14-15 in Atlanta. Scheduled speakers include Amy Butler, pastor of Riverside Church in New York City; Luis Cortez, president and CEO of Esperanza; Professor Mary Foskett of Wake Forest University; and Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church.

James Perkins, president of the PNBC, asked church members to wear black this Sunday “to mourn the deaths and verdicts of young African-American males.” He also asked churches to designate a special time during the service “to pray over our children, especially our boys, and to ask God’s covering on their lives, our families and our communities.”

“We cannot afford to hold our peace in the face of this growing atmosphere of injustice,” Perkins said in the bulletin.

Paynter and Jones invited the Fellowship to join the PNBC and other African-American denominations in praying “for God’s deep peace to be experienced by all” and “that it would be the undercurrent running beneath all that is said and done.”

“Pray that God’s desire that we may be one would lead to relationship building, of seeing ourselves in the other, and therefore into forgiveness, healing and reconciliation,” they said. “Pray that through God’s love we can become a reconciling people.”

]]>In the wake of recent events in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island, N.Y., CBF Executive Coordinator Suzii Paynter and CBF Moderator Kasey Jones have urged Cooperative Baptists to stand in solidarity with African-American Baptists through prayer during worship this Sunday.

By Bob Allen

Top leaders in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship endorsed Black Lives Matter Sunday, a campaign mourning the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner during worship services Sunday, Dec. 14, sponsored by the Progressive National Baptist Convention.

“We invite the Fellowship to stand in solidarity with our African-American Baptist sisters and brothers bearing witness through prayer and vigil this Sunday,” CBF Executive Coordinator Suzii Paynter and Moderator Kasey Jones said in a statement Dec. 11.

Paynter, who is white, and Jones, an African-American, said the 1,800-church Fellowship is committed to pursuing racial reconciliation through “covenants of action” pairing black and white congregations in hands-on mission projects through the New Baptist Covenant, a network that includes both the CBF and the PNBC spearheaded by former President Jimmy Carter.

Paynter and Jones, who serves as senior pastor at National Baptist Memorial Church in Washington, encouraged Fellowship Baptists to consider attending the upcoming New Baptist Covenant Summit, Jan. 14-15 in Atlanta. Scheduled speakers include Amy Butler, pastor of Riverside Church in New York City; Luis Cortez, president and CEO of Esperanza; Professor Mary Foskett of Wake Forest University; and Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church.

James Perkins, president of the PNBC, asked church members to wear black this Sunday “to mourn the deaths and verdicts of young African-American males.” He also asked churches to designate a special time during the service “to pray over our children, especially our boys, and to ask God’s covering on their lives, our families and our communities.”

“We cannot afford to hold our peace in the face of this growing atmosphere of injustice,” Perkins said in the bulletin.

Paynter and Jones invited the Fellowship to join the PNBC and other African-American denominations in praying “for God’s deep peace to be experienced by all” and “that it would be the undercurrent running beneath all that is said and done.”

“Pray that God’s desire that we may be one would lead to relationship building, of seeing ourselves in the other, and therefore into forgiveness, healing and reconciliation,” they said. “Pray that through God’s love we can become a reconciling people.”

A Cooperative Baptist Fellowship pastor in St. Louis said any hope for improving race relations lies not in agreement about a non-indictment in the Michael Brown shooting death but in relationships that will grow between people with differing views.

In a blog the day after a grand jury in nearby Ferguson, Mo., decided not to indict a white police officer who killed a black teenager in August, Kirkwood Baptist Church Pastor Scott Stearman recalled lessons he learned following another racially charged shooting in the St. Louis suburb of Kirkwood in 2008.

Back then Stearman, who is white, joined Jeffrey Croft, pastor of predominantly black Harrison Avenue Missionary Baptist Church in Kirkwood, in reaching out to a racially divided city after an African-American activist barged into a city council meeting and killed two police officers and three city officials before authorities shot him to death.

Stearman said those and other conversations sparked by events six years ago continue to bear fruit today.

“Those relationships developed in the aftermath of that tragic shooting continue today and have been at the heart of many good things that have happened in Kirkwood in recent years,” Stearman said in his Nov. 25 blog.

Among them, Kirkwood supports the Community for Understanding and Hope, a group that initiates dialogue and social interaction in hopes of transforming the Kirkwood area into a “prejudice-free community” by creating an environment of understanding and healing.

“I have friendships with a number of black clergy,” Stearman said. “We are working on several social justice initiatives and will continue to do so.”

Stearman said he has confidence in the Ferguson Commission created by Gov. Jay Nixon to study underlying social and economic conditions underscored by unrest in the wake of the death of Michael Brown and acquittal of police officer Darren Wilson, because he knows a couple of the African-American leaders on it.

“They will build relationships across the huge gulf of experience to work constructively,” he said. “They will ensure that needed systemic change isn’t swept under the rug. They will do their best, not to reach agreement on the past, but to construct consensus on building a better tomorrow — ensuring we know each other well enough to hold hands as we get there.”

Stearman has shared the story about the aftermath of the Kirkwood City Council shootings in the context of the New Baptist Covenant, a movement aimed at healing division among Baptists in the United States over issues including race, geography and theology.

In anticipation of the Nov. 24 grand jury decision, Stearman recently preached a sermon reminding that the Bible calls Christians not only to give to charity but also to advocate for social justice.

“This is where, it seems to me, that some of the current protestors in St. Louis have it right,” he said. “Our current status quo is unsustainable, and moreover we Christian people have a responsibility to not only give charitably but to work toward systemic change.”

“There is something happening in St. Louis and around the nation, a recognition that this isn’t about the shooting of just one kid,” Stearman said, “that there has been and is in our society some systemic injustices that some people are seeing that they’ve never seen before.”

“I’m talking about mass incarceration rates,” he said. “I’m talking about a justice system that does not provide good support for those who have been caught up in some very unfortunate criminal actions. I’m talking about poverty that’s endemic in some areas and schools which are under-supported. I’m talking about these kind of things which are not open to interpretation.”

“There are unquestionably injustices in our society, which are objectively and obviously there,” he said.

Stearman said if he’s learned anything since the Kirkwood tragedy, it’s that people “wear very different glasses” when it comes to matters of racial inequality.

“We have very different lenses through which we see the world, and those lenses, those glasses are so fundamentally different, it’s sometimes mind-boggling,” he said. “This one incident that happened in Ferguson in August is seen so radically different by different people.”

Stearman said that’s important to acknowledge because some of the reaction likely to happen after the grand jury decision “is maybe hard for some of us to process.”

]]>Pastor Scott Stearman says black and white Americans tend to look through “different glasses” when it comes to matters of racial injustice.

By Bob Allen

A Cooperative Baptist Fellowship pastor in St. Louis said any hope for improving race relations lies not in agreement about a non-indictment in the Michael Brown shooting death but in relationships that will grow between people with differing views.

In a blog the day after a grand jury in nearby Ferguson, Mo., decided not to indict a white police officer who killed a black teenager in August, Kirkwood Baptist Church Pastor Scott Stearman recalled lessons he learned following another racially charged shooting in the St. Louis suburb of Kirkwood in 2008.

Back then Stearman, who is white, joined Jeffrey Croft, pastor of predominantly black Harrison Avenue Missionary Baptist Church in Kirkwood, in reaching out to a racially divided city after an African-American activist barged into a city council meeting and killed two police officers and three city officials before authorities shot him to death.

Stearman said those and other conversations sparked by events six years ago continue to bear fruit today.

“Those relationships developed in the aftermath of that tragic shooting continue today and have been at the heart of many good things that have happened in Kirkwood in recent years,” Stearman said in his Nov. 25 blog.

Among them, Kirkwood supports the Community for Understanding and Hope, a group that initiates dialogue and social interaction in hopes of transforming the Kirkwood area into a “prejudice-free community” by creating an environment of understanding and healing.

“I have friendships with a number of black clergy,” Stearman said. “We are working on several social justice initiatives and will continue to do so.”

Stearman said he has confidence in the Ferguson Commission created by Gov. Jay Nixon to study underlying social and economic conditions underscored by unrest in the wake of the death of Michael Brown and acquittal of police officer Darren Wilson, because he knows a couple of the African-American leaders on it.

“They will build relationships across the huge gulf of experience to work constructively,” he said. “They will ensure that needed systemic change isn’t swept under the rug. They will do their best, not to reach agreement on the past, but to construct consensus on building a better tomorrow — ensuring we know each other well enough to hold hands as we get there.”

Stearman has shared the story about the aftermath of the Kirkwood City Council shootings in the context of the New Baptist Covenant, a movement aimed at healing division among Baptists in the United States over issues including race, geography and theology.

In anticipation of the Nov. 24 grand jury decision, Stearman recently preached a sermon reminding that the Bible calls Christians not only to give to charity but also to advocate for social justice.

“This is where, it seems to me, that some of the current protestors in St. Louis have it right,” he said. “Our current status quo is unsustainable, and moreover we Christian people have a responsibility to not only give charitably but to work toward systemic change.”

“There is something happening in St. Louis and around the nation, a recognition that this isn’t about the shooting of just one kid,” Stearman said, “that there has been and is in our society some systemic injustices that some people are seeing that they’ve never seen before.”

“I’m talking about mass incarceration rates,” he said. “I’m talking about a justice system that does not provide good support for those who have been caught up in some very unfortunate criminal actions. I’m talking about poverty that’s endemic in some areas and schools which are under-supported. I’m talking about these kind of things which are not open to interpretation.”

“There are unquestionably injustices in our society, which are objectively and obviously there,” he said.

Stearman said if he’s learned anything since the Kirkwood tragedy, it’s that people “wear very different glasses” when it comes to matters of racial inequality.

“We have very different lenses through which we see the world, and those lenses, those glasses are so fundamentally different, it’s sometimes mind-boggling,” he said. “This one incident that happened in Ferguson in August is seen so radically different by different people.”

Stearman said that’s important to acknowledge because some of the reaction likely to happen after the grand jury decision “is maybe hard for some of us to process.”

A Texas foundation started by Sysco founder and Baptist layman John Baugh has pledged $1 million over four years for operating expenses of a movement spearheaded by former President Jimmy Carter to unify U.S. Baptists across racial, geographical and theological lines.

The gift from the San Antonio-based Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation will help the 7-year-old New Baptist Covenant movement shift from large meetings to “covenants of action,” where two or more churches from different Baptist traditions come together to address a pressing need in their community.

Hannah McMahan, New Baptist Covenant coordinator, said the movement plans to nurture 100 covenants of action nationwide over the next four years.

“We are delighted by the generosity of the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation,” said Mahan, a graduate of Wake Forest Divinity School and whose office is based at the Progressive National Baptist Convention headquarters in Washington, D.C.

“The Baughs have been dedicated partners in the ministry of the New Baptist Covenant since the beginning,” McMahan said. “I am deeply moved by their generosity, and their faithful support of the mission of the New Baptist Covenant movement.”

Jackie Moore, vice president of the foundation named after her grandparents, said she believes the founders would have supported President Carter’s effort to bring Baptists together around values that unite rather than divide.

“My grandfather, John Baugh, dreamed of the day that Baptists would be known not for the divisions between them, but for how brightly Christ’s love shone through them despite their superficial differences,” said Moore, also a member of the Baptist News Global board.

“He and my grandmother, Eula Mae, were profoundly committed to the church’s responsibility to love and serve others,” she said. “Each of them fostered a life-long conviction that this was the way to best serve God, and we are thrilled to recognize this conviction as the driving force behind the efforts of the New Baptist Covenant.”

Carter, a lifelong Southern Baptist who in recent years switched loyalties to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, brought leaders from more than 30 Baptist organizations together in 2007 to discuss creative opportunities for fellowship and cooperation.

An inaugural New Baptist Covenant celebration in January of 2008 in Atlanta attracted more than 15,000 Baptists from various traditions. A second national meeting in 2011 was beamed via satellite to locations around the country.

The next New Baptist Covenant summit is scheduled Jan. 14-15, 2015. Confirmed speakers include Amy Butler of the Riverside Church in New York, Luis Cortés of Esperanza in Philadelphia and Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

Established in 1995, the Baugh Foundation has supported a wide range of Baptist causes including Baptist News Global, formerly known as ABPnews/Herald. It was formed to continue philanthropic work of John Baugh, founder and former CEO of Sysco, the world’s largest food service company, who was active in the moderate faction of SBC controversy in the 1980s and 1990s, and his wife, Eulah Mae.

John Baugh died in March 2007 at age 91. His widow died six months later at 89. Their daughter, Barbara “Babs” Baugh, now serves as foundation president.

]]>A four-year gift by the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation is intended to nurture 100 “covenants of action” uniting Baptists of different stripes in shared mission.

By Bob Allen

A Texas foundation started by Sysco founder and Baptist layman John Baugh has pledged $1 million over four years for operating expenses of a movement spearheaded by former President Jimmy Carter to unify U.S. Baptists across racial, geographical and theological lines.

The gift from the San Antonio-based Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation will help the 7-year-old New Baptist Covenant movement shift from large meetings to “covenants of action,” where two or more churches from different Baptist traditions come together to address a pressing need in their community.

Hannah McMahan, New Baptist Covenant coordinator, said the movement plans to nurture 100 covenants of action nationwide over the next four years.

“We are delighted by the generosity of the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation,” said Mahan, a graduate of Wake Forest Divinity School and whose office is based at the Progressive National Baptist Convention headquarters in Washington, D.C.

“The Baughs have been dedicated partners in the ministry of the New Baptist Covenant since the beginning,” McMahan said. “I am deeply moved by their generosity, and their faithful support of the mission of the New Baptist Covenant movement.”

Jackie Moore, vice president of the foundation named after her grandparents, said she believes the founders would have supported President Carter’s effort to bring Baptists together around values that unite rather than divide.

“My grandfather, John Baugh, dreamed of the day that Baptists would be known not for the divisions between them, but for how brightly Christ’s love shone through them despite their superficial differences,” said Moore, also a member of the Baptist News Global board.

“He and my grandmother, Eula Mae, were profoundly committed to the church’s responsibility to love and serve others,” she said. “Each of them fostered a life-long conviction that this was the way to best serve God, and we are thrilled to recognize this conviction as the driving force behind the efforts of the New Baptist Covenant.”

Carter, a lifelong Southern Baptist who in recent years switched loyalties to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, brought leaders from more than 30 Baptist organizations together in 2007 to discuss creative opportunities for fellowship and cooperation.

An inaugural New Baptist Covenant celebration in January of 2008 in Atlanta attracted more than 15,000 Baptists from various traditions. A second national meeting in 2011 was beamed via satellite to locations around the country.

The next New Baptist Covenant summit is scheduled Jan. 14-15, 2015. Confirmed speakers include Amy Butler of the Riverside Church in New York, Luis Cortés of Esperanza in Philadelphia and Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

Established in 1995, the Baugh Foundation has supported a wide range of Baptist causes including Baptist News Global, formerly known as ABPnews/Herald. It was formed to continue philanthropic work of John Baugh, founder and former CEO of Sysco, the world’s largest food service company, who was active in the moderate faction of SBC controversy in the 1980s and 1990s, and his wife, Eulah Mae.

John Baugh died in March 2007 at age 91. His widow died six months later at 89. Their daughter, Barbara “Babs” Baugh, now serves as foundation president.

A white Baptist pastor in St. Louis says he cannot condone rioting in nearby Ferguson, Mo., but he understands the anger about a black teenager killed by police Aug. 9.

On Wednesday police used teargas to disperse protestors in the fourth-straight night of violence since a Sunday candlelight vigil to honor 18-year-old Michael Brown turned to vandalism and looting affecting more than a dozen businesses.

Observers say the shooting death of the unarmed young man who was excited about heading to college set off long-simmering tensions between Ferguson’s mostly African-American population and a police force that is predominantly white.

Scott Stearman, senior pastor of Kirkwood Baptist Church, said in an Aug. 12 blog post that the killing and its aftermath serve as a reminder of the city’s fragile and fractured race relations and calls for ongoing understanding.

Kirkwood Baptist is one of several white and black churches in five cities across the country paired in “Covenants of Action” to collaborate on local ministry projects aimed at breaking down barriers of race, theology and geography among Baptists in the United States. The effort is part of a New Baptist Covenant movement started by former President Jimmy Carter in 2007.

Stearman, who is paired with Pastor Jimmy Brown of St. Luke Memorial Baptist Church in St. Louis, said a week before Brown’s death he attended a meeting of the predominantly black Progressive National Baptist Convention.

While there he heard Tracy Martin, father of slain African-American teenager Trayvon Martin, speak about trying to make something positive out of the tragedy of his son’s untimely death and civil-rights leader Otis Moss Jr. denounce “Stand Your Ground Laws” as contemporary lynching.

“The violence in Ferguson this week is easy to condemn,” Stearman said. “It is unproductive and evil, in that innocent bystanders are always hurt in this kind of protest. It hurts the cause of the protestors more than it helps.”

That said, Stearman insisted it is essential for people who have been born in privileged historical circumstances to “understand that while the violence is never justified, the anger is.”

He challenged church members to imagine what it’s like living in circumstances where they are more likely than others to be stopped and searched by police, few decent jobs exist, payday lenders charge exorbitant interest rates and disproportionate numbers of young males are serving time in prison.

“None of these circumstances, or many others I could elucidate, excuses violence,” Stearman said. ”Nor do they explain away a life of bad decisions. However, they do present compassionate people a reality which empowers our understanding.”

He said New Yorker Executive Editor Amy Davidson stated it succinctly: “The community’s trust was broken before any windows were.”

Stearman said people of faith must follow Jesus’ example of crossing racial and cultural boundaries to extend healing and compassion and seek to understand what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes.

“This is part of the reason I’m such a fan of the New Baptist Covenant,” Stearman said. “It is an attempt to get racially distinct churches working together on projects. We can do more together, and we need to know each other.”

In 2008 Stearman joined Jeffrey Croft, pastor of predominantly black Harrison Avenue Missionary Baptist Church in Kirkwood, in reaching out to a racially divided city after an African-American activist barged into a city council meeting and killed two police officers and three city officials before authorities shot him to death.

At a 2011 screening of the Baptist Center for Ethics video titled "Beneath the Skin: Baptists and Racism," Stearman said the process taught him two things: “Racism is very personal,” and “while we have moved beyond some of the racism, what we are not beyond is encoded, or institutional, racism.”

“It is only with relationships and understanding that we can get past these kind of dichotomies,” Stearman said in his blog.

]]>CBF pastor Scott Stearman says racial violence erupting in suburban St. Louis illustrates the need for the New Baptist Covenant, an effort to bring Christians together across barriers of theology and race.

By Bob Allen

A white Baptist pastor in St. Louis says he cannot condone rioting in nearby Ferguson, Mo., but he understands the anger about a black teenager killed by police Aug. 9.

On Wednesday police used teargas to disperse protestors in the fourth-straight night of violence since a Sunday candlelight vigil to honor 18-year-old Michael Brown turned to vandalism and looting affecting more than a dozen businesses.

Observers say the shooting death of the unarmed young man who was excited about heading to college set off long-simmering tensions between Ferguson’s mostly African-American population and a police force that is predominantly white.

Scott Stearman, senior pastor of Kirkwood Baptist Church, said in an Aug. 12 blog post that the killing and its aftermath serve as a reminder of the city’s fragile and fractured race relations and calls for ongoing understanding.

Kirkwood Baptist is one of several white and black churches in five cities across the country paired in “Covenants of Action” to collaborate on local ministry projects aimed at breaking down barriers of race, theology and geography among Baptists in the United States. The effort is part of a New Baptist Covenant movement started by former President Jimmy Carter in 2007.

Stearman, who is paired with Pastor Jimmy Brown of St. Luke Memorial Baptist Church in St. Louis, said a week before Brown’s death he attended a meeting of the predominantly black Progressive National Baptist Convention.

While there he heard Tracy Martin, father of slain African-American teenager Trayvon Martin, speak about trying to make something positive out of the tragedy of his son’s untimely death and civil-rights leader Otis Moss Jr. denounce “Stand Your Ground Laws” as contemporary lynching.

“The violence in Ferguson this week is easy to condemn,” Stearman said. “It is unproductive and evil, in that innocent bystanders are always hurt in this kind of protest. It hurts the cause of the protestors more than it helps.”

That said, Stearman insisted it is essential for people who have been born in privileged historical circumstances to “understand that while the violence is never justified, the anger is.”

He challenged church members to imagine what it’s like living in circumstances where they are more likely than others to be stopped and searched by police, few decent jobs exist, payday lenders charge exorbitant interest rates and disproportionate numbers of young males are serving time in prison.

“None of these circumstances, or many others I could elucidate, excuses violence,” Stearman said. ”Nor do they explain away a life of bad decisions. However, they do present compassionate people a reality which empowers our understanding.”

He said New Yorker Executive Editor Amy Davidson stated it succinctly: “The community’s trust was broken before any windows were.”

Stearman said people of faith must follow Jesus’ example of crossing racial and cultural boundaries to extend healing and compassion and seek to understand what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes.

“This is part of the reason I’m such a fan of the New Baptist Covenant,” Stearman said. “It is an attempt to get racially distinct churches working together on projects. We can do more together, and we need to know each other.”

In 2008 Stearman joined Jeffrey Croft, pastor of predominantly black Harrison Avenue Missionary Baptist Church in Kirkwood, in reaching out to a racially divided city after an African-American activist barged into a city council meeting and killed two police officers and three city officials before authorities shot him to death.

At a 2011 screening of the Baptist Center for Ethics video titled "Beneath the Skin: Baptists and Racism," Stearman said the process taught him two things: “Racism is very personal,” and “while we have moved beyond some of the racism, what we are not beyond is encoded, or institutional, racism.”

“It is only with relationships and understanding that we can get past these kind of dichotomies,” Stearman said in his blog.

Though I am serving this year as theologian-in-residence for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, this reflection on the annual CBF General Assembly this past week represents my independent, unvetted opinion.

I write on the day of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, culminating its 2013-14 term. This is what Twitter is spewing as I write. Report: “Religious Liberty Wins, Religious Liberty Wins," scream the fans of the 5-4 decision on Monday. White House: “Ruling Jeopardizes the Health of Women.” Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas): Hundreds more lawsuits will fight the White House’s “incredible assault” on religious liberty. Noah Shachtman: “With Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court just declared themselves America’s new high priests.” Planned Parenthood: “This is about justice, and we’re fighting back.” Samuel Rodriguez: “SCOTUS affirmed the God-given right of conscience and religious liberty.” My personal over-the-top favorite, from @Readersaresmart: a picture of the majority five judges today with the heading, “The faces of fascism.”

Meanwhile, CBF’s tweet of the morning: “Assembly Blog — Try This at Home — Five Ways to Help Your Church Learn.”

Other tweets from CBF General Assembly late last week included features on new efforts at church planting/starting, a new CBF Fellows cohort, worship as narrative ritual, successfully negotiating the search process, the Together for Hope ministry and the commissioning service for chaplains, pastoral counselors and field personnel.

Suffice it to say that few such tweets were likely to go viral in the global twitterverse. Not a one of them had anything directly to do with the culture wars. Therefore by definition they were of little interest in the shrill American public square circa 2014.

But those who were at the General Assembly would know that publicly significant convictions were indeed articulated and practiced at that meeting:

• South Africa anti-apartheid leader Rev. Dr. Allan Boesak offered a morally stirring, and intellectually demanding, analysis of the connections between confession, forgiveness, justice and social reconciliation. His cry that “justice is indivisible” challenged CBF listeners to consider just how thoroughgoing our commitment to the marginalized will turn out to be.

• Civil rights leader and former UN Ambassador Andrew Young reminisced about his service in the Carter Administration, and the national humility that President Carter demanded of all who would represent the United States in international venues. He called on listeners to fight for the well-being of the world’s two billion brutally victimized women.

• New Baptist Covenant leader Hannah McMahan described the mission of NBC as building bridges between historically racially divided churches all over the country, mainly through joint service and mission work. Several case studies were offered in a video presentation.

• CBF Executive Coordinator Suzii Paynter described the Fellowship’s ramped up domestic and international advocacy work, including efforts on immigration and predatory lending as well as on behalf of religious liberty and the well-being of women and girls.

• Speakers in multiple venues emphasized opening new doors for women in ministry and equipping women for success in ministry.

What I saw at CBF General Assembly is a voluntary, amicable community of congregations, ministries, fellowships, educational institutions and individuals who are seeking to carry forward a wide variety of forms of Christian ministry and mission, mainly focused on humble congregational work carried out by both women and men and serving those the world cares least about.

If CBF has a politics, or a social witness, as of 2014 it could be described non-triumphalist, consensus-driven, service-oriented, and gender- and race-inclusive.

CBF is not trying to be in charge of America or the world and doesn’t project itself as having all the answers. However, it is slowly edging into advocacy in areas where the fellowship is able to find consensus.

CBF wants to make a difference through serving the least of these, as incarnationally and teachably as possible. It doesn’t seek headlines about serving in the world’s neediest places, but it is doing so.

CBF was born defending women in ministry and will continue to seek advances on that front, even while conservative American religion becomes more deeply entrenched in patriarchal leadership models.

And, though primarily white, CBF is trying its best to overcome American and Christian racial divisions through slow, patient racial reconciliation work.

If America and its religion is destined to continually fracture along right-left lines, and if that is the religion news story that everyone wants to talk about, then this particular religious community will be of little national interest.

But perhaps the very existence of a religious community — primarily located in the politically hot-blooded South — that doesn’t fit this narrative, but is instead doing the slow, organic work of ministry, service, advocacy, inclusion and reconciliation, is in fact a story worth telling.

Though I am serving this year as theologian-in-residence for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, this reflection on the annual CBF General Assembly this past week represents my independent, unvetted opinion.

I write on the day of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, culminating its 2013-14 term. This is what Twitter is spewing as I write. Report: “Religious Liberty Wins, Religious Liberty Wins," scream the fans of the 5-4 decision on Monday. White House: “Ruling Jeopardizes the Health of Women.” Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas): Hundreds more lawsuits will fight the White House’s “incredible assault” on religious liberty. Noah Shachtman: “With Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court just declared themselves America’s new high priests.” Planned Parenthood: “This is about justice, and we’re fighting back.” Samuel Rodriguez: “SCOTUS affirmed the God-given right of conscience and religious liberty.” My personal over-the-top favorite, from @Readersaresmart: a picture of the majority five judges today with the heading, “The faces of fascism.”

Meanwhile, CBF’s tweet of the morning: “Assembly Blog — Try This at Home — Five Ways to Help Your Church Learn.”

Other tweets from CBF General Assembly late last week included features on new efforts at church planting/starting, a new CBF Fellows cohort, worship as narrative ritual, successfully negotiating the search process, the Together for Hope ministry and the commissioning service for chaplains, pastoral counselors and field personnel.

Suffice it to say that few such tweets were likely to go viral in the global twitterverse. Not a one of them had anything directly to do with the culture wars. Therefore by definition they were of little interest in the shrill American public square circa 2014.

But those who were at the General Assembly would know that publicly significant convictions were indeed articulated and practiced at that meeting:

• South Africa anti-apartheid leader Rev. Dr. Allan Boesak offered a morally stirring, and intellectually demanding, analysis of the connections between confession, forgiveness, justice and social reconciliation. His cry that “justice is indivisible” challenged CBF listeners to consider just how thoroughgoing our commitment to the marginalized will turn out to be.

• Civil rights leader and former UN Ambassador Andrew Young reminisced about his service in the Carter Administration, and the national humility that President Carter demanded of all who would represent the United States in international venues. He called on listeners to fight for the well-being of the world’s two billion brutally victimized women.

• New Baptist Covenant leader Hannah McMahan described the mission of NBC as building bridges between historically racially divided churches all over the country, mainly through joint service and mission work. Several case studies were offered in a video presentation.

• CBF Executive Coordinator Suzii Paynter described the Fellowship’s ramped up domestic and international advocacy work, including efforts on immigration and predatory lending as well as on behalf of religious liberty and the well-being of women and girls.

• Speakers in multiple venues emphasized opening new doors for women in ministry and equipping women for success in ministry.

What I saw at CBF General Assembly is a voluntary, amicable community of congregations, ministries, fellowships, educational institutions and individuals who are seeking to carry forward a wide variety of forms of Christian ministry and mission, mainly focused on humble congregational work carried out by both women and men and serving those the world cares least about.

If CBF has a politics, or a social witness, as of 2014 it could be described non-triumphalist, consensus-driven, service-oriented, and gender- and race-inclusive.

CBF is not trying to be in charge of America or the world and doesn’t project itself as having all the answers. However, it is slowly edging into advocacy in areas where the fellowship is able to find consensus.

CBF wants to make a difference through serving the least of these, as incarnationally and teachably as possible. It doesn’t seek headlines about serving in the world’s neediest places, but it is doing so.

CBF was born defending women in ministry and will continue to seek advances on that front, even while conservative American religion becomes more deeply entrenched in patriarchal leadership models.

And, though primarily white, CBF is trying its best to overcome American and Christian racial divisions through slow, patient racial reconciliation work.

If America and its religion is destined to continually fracture along right-left lines, and if that is the religion news story that everyone wants to talk about, then this particular religious community will be of little national interest.

But perhaps the very existence of a religious community — primarily located in the politically hot-blooded South — that doesn’t fit this narrative, but is instead doing the slow, organic work of ministry, service, advocacy, inclusion and reconciliation, is in fact a story worth telling.

Anti-apartheid activist and theologian Allan Boesak believes Baptists are at the heart of a resurgent ecumenical movement in reconcilation.

By Jeff Brumley

Allan Boesak is a native South African and Reformed Church pastor and theologian who worked shoulder to shoulder with Nelson Mandela and others to defeat apartheid. He is a passionate advocate of the reconciliation and ecumenical movements and is a top expert on liberation theology.

And Boesak is also this: a big fan of Baptists. So much so that in the 1990s he was baptized — while a member of a Presbyterian church — in an African-American Baptist congregation in Oakland, Calif., as a show of solidarity for the tradition. His whole family went along.

“We were baptized into that church not as a political tactic, but ... to build a relationship and to understand what ‘ecumenical’ means.”

“My spiritual bond with the Baptist church has grown,” said Boesak, who still worships in a Presbyterian church.

Baptists were leaders in the American civil rights movement and some continue today to nurture what is left of an emaciated global ecumenical movement. In fact, they are among some of the strongest signs of that movement’s eventual resurgence, he said.

“I think the New Baptist Covenant is that kind of movement, and I think it will continue to grow around issues that really matter,” he said.

Boesak’s perspective is one steeped in advocacy for social, economic and political justice and the importance of reconciliation in humanitarian causes. He became one of South Africa’s leading anti-apartheid leaders, working alongside Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the late Nelson Mandela.

At 36, Boesak was exposed to the world’s ecumenical stage when he was elected president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, which boasts more than 70 million members from 100 nations.

But Boesak describes Jesus Christ as his main mentor in these causes — especially in ecumenism.

‘Prophetic networks’

The global ecumenical movement is just as needed today as ever, but has fallen on hard times as political isolationism has taken root around the world — especially in developed nations, Boesak said.

He said the movement has waned since its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s and for a short time in the 1980s.

One reason: peace and justice have become unpopular in the northern hemisphere, where some churches have subsequently withdrawn their support.

“As political isolationism grows, so the churches in those countries fall into the trap of thinking our strength lies in our isolation,” he said. “It becomes easier to just let something wither and die.”

But Boesak said he is optimistic about the global ecumenical movement because it is, he insists, God’s will.

“One of the last things Jesus told his disciples was to go beyond Jerusalem and beyond Judea and make disciples,” he said. “It means ... exude and live and be inspired by a oneness and a unity no matter where we are, not matter which culture we live in and no matter what language we speak.”

Boesak compared the movement to Pentecost, when people from many nations gathered together and were united by the Holy Spirit. “That is saying to us that every household of God needs to be connected in every way we can be.”

Evidence God is moving again in that field can be seen on small scales around the globe. Relatively small, scattered groups are beginning to cooperate within nations and internationally on causes of social justice and peace.

The Covenant is just one of one of the many “prophetic networks of action in the world, who are speaking about reconciliation and justice in very authentic ways.”

That surprises some, given the accomplishments of high-profile movements such as civil rights and anti-apartheid. But oppression through discrimination continues despite those victories, Boesak said.

A good example is South Africa, he said, where the constitution now guarantees the human dignity of each person.

“But the realities that we were fighting — poverty, exclusion — all of those realities still remain and it is upon those realities that liberation theology still works.”

Despite the legislative and social victories of the civil rights movement in the United States, he added, women minorities continue to struggle for basic economic justice.

“It seems to me that liberation theology has more of a reason to exist today than it had when we were fighting blatant apartheid and blatant Jim Crow,” Boesak said. “It seems to me we may have rejoiced too quickly.”

Mandela ‘turned minds upside-down’

Yet many lessons learned in those movements continue to inspire despite ongoing struggles. A good deal of that is because of Nelson Mandela.

What moved Boesak most about Mandela, he said, was that the politician and activist had so much to teach pastors about Christ and theology.

“He came out of prison and did not show even one hint of an impulse of bitterness or anger,” Boesak said, adding that he knew many in the church and wider society who thirsted for retribution once apartheid had fallen.

“But to come out of prison and immediately say that we have only one future together as a nation, and that we must speak about reconciliation and forgiveness — that was astounding,” he said.

Mandela was criticized by some and labeled an “accommodationist” for not seeking retribution against whites after 350 years of slavery and apartheid, much of which had been rationalized and supported through Christian theology. These were voices that wanted a revolutionary leader.

“But he turned people’s minds upside-down,” Boesak said.

Mandela was already known as a great political thinker and tactician. Suddenly, South Africans also saw his spiritual depth.

“We had no idea of the actual greatness that was in Nelson Mandela, and it almost exploded on us.”

]]>

Anti-apartheid activist and theologian Allan Boesak believes Baptists are at the heart of a resurgent ecumenical movement in reconcilation.

By Jeff Brumley

Allan Boesak is a native South African and Reformed Church pastor and theologian who worked shoulder to shoulder with Nelson Mandela and others to defeat apartheid. He is a passionate advocate of the reconciliation and ecumenical movements and is a top expert on liberation theology.

And Boesak is also this: a big fan of Baptists. So much so that in the 1990s he was baptized — while a member of a Presbyterian church — in an African-American Baptist congregation in Oakland, Calif., as a show of solidarity for the tradition. His whole family went along.

“We were baptized into that church not as a political tactic, but ... to build a relationship and to understand what ‘ecumenical’ means.”

“My spiritual bond with the Baptist church has grown,” said Boesak, who still worships in a Presbyterian church.

Baptists were leaders in the American civil rights movement and some continue today to nurture what is left of an emaciated global ecumenical movement. In fact, they are among some of the strongest signs of that movement’s eventual resurgence, he said.

“I think the New Baptist Covenant is that kind of movement, and I think it will continue to grow around issues that really matter,” he said.

Boesak’s perspective is one steeped in advocacy for social, economic and political justice and the importance of reconciliation in humanitarian causes. He became one of South Africa’s leading anti-apartheid leaders, working alongside Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the late Nelson Mandela.

At 36, Boesak was exposed to the world’s ecumenical stage when he was elected president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, which boasts more than 70 million members from 100 nations.

But Boesak describes Jesus Christ as his main mentor in these causes — especially in ecumenism.

‘Prophetic networks’

The global ecumenical movement is just as needed today as ever, but has fallen on hard times as political isolationism has taken root around the world — especially in developed nations, Boesak said.

He said the movement has waned since its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s and for a short time in the 1980s.

One reason: peace and justice have become unpopular in the northern hemisphere, where some churches have subsequently withdrawn their support.

“As political isolationism grows, so the churches in those countries fall into the trap of thinking our strength lies in our isolation,” he said. “It becomes easier to just let something wither and die.”

But Boesak said he is optimistic about the global ecumenical movement because it is, he insists, God’s will.

“One of the last things Jesus told his disciples was to go beyond Jerusalem and beyond Judea and make disciples,” he said. “It means ... exude and live and be inspired by a oneness and a unity no matter where we are, not matter which culture we live in and no matter what language we speak.”

Boesak compared the movement to Pentecost, when people from many nations gathered together and were united by the Holy Spirit. “That is saying to us that every household of God needs to be connected in every way we can be.”

Evidence God is moving again in that field can be seen on small scales around the globe. Relatively small, scattered groups are beginning to cooperate within nations and internationally on causes of social justice and peace.

The Covenant is just one of one of the many “prophetic networks of action in the world, who are speaking about reconciliation and justice in very authentic ways.”

That surprises some, given the accomplishments of high-profile movements such as civil rights and anti-apartheid. But oppression through discrimination continues despite those victories, Boesak said.

A good example is South Africa, he said, where the constitution now guarantees the human dignity of each person.

“But the realities that we were fighting — poverty, exclusion — all of those realities still remain and it is upon those realities that liberation theology still works.”

Despite the legislative and social victories of the civil rights movement in the United States, he added, women minorities continue to struggle for basic economic justice.

“It seems to me that liberation theology has more of a reason to exist today than it had when we were fighting blatant apartheid and blatant Jim Crow,” Boesak said. “It seems to me we may have rejoiced too quickly.”

Mandela ‘turned minds upside-down’

Yet many lessons learned in those movements continue to inspire despite ongoing struggles. A good deal of that is because of Nelson Mandela.

What moved Boesak most about Mandela, he said, was that the politician and activist had so much to teach pastors about Christ and theology.

“He came out of prison and did not show even one hint of an impulse of bitterness or anger,” Boesak said, adding that he knew many in the church and wider society who thirsted for retribution once apartheid had fallen.

“But to come out of prison and immediately say that we have only one future together as a nation, and that we must speak about reconciliation and forgiveness — that was astounding,” he said.

Mandela was criticized by some and labeled an “accommodationist” for not seeking retribution against whites after 350 years of slavery and apartheid, much of which had been rationalized and supported through Christian theology. These were voices that wanted a revolutionary leader.

“But he turned people’s minds upside-down,” Boesak said.

Mandela was already known as a great political thinker and tactician. Suddenly, South Africans also saw his spiritual depth.

“We had no idea of the actual greatness that was in Nelson Mandela, and it almost exploded on us.”

]]>Jeff BrumleyOrganizationsMon, 09 Jun 2014 13:31:11 -0400Blurry vision and how we got here: The ex-SBC, part IIhttp://baptistnews.com/opinion/columns/item/28413-blurry-vision-how-we-got-here-the-ex-sbc-part-ii
http://baptistnews.com/opinion/columns/item/28413-blurry-vision-how-we-got-here-the-ex-sbc-part-iiWhy ex-SBC Baptists tend to lack theological clarity and identity, how we got here and why it matters. Part II in a series.

Given the wide conversation sparked by my last column, about the lack of theological clarity and identity found in that slice of the U. S. Christian community that became ex-Southern Baptist, I follow up today with reflections on some of the sources of that lack of clarity. Again, I welcome crowdsourcing here, and I am fully aware of the limits of my own or any other individual’s perspective. I am also aware that ex-SBC life varies quite a bit across the vast expanse of the Mid-Atlantic, Southeast and Southwest. But here is my general analysis:

Great diversity concerning what it meant to be Southern Baptist long predated the convention schism of 1979-1991, especially given our commitment to congregational autonomy. This diversity was for a long time papered over by at least a limited shared identity provided by the Cooperative Program and the institutions and projects it funded. After the SBC split/takeover, the ex-SBC side never replaced the Cooperative Program and its institutions with anything similarly identity-producing. New ex-SBC institutions were, relatively speaking, weak and fragmented.

The convention controversy of 1979-1991 took a particular form that played a key role in later shaping ex-SBC identity or lack thereof. The “takeover conservatives” always said the fight was about theology, notably biblical inerrancy; their opponents mainly said it wasn’t about theology, but about Baptist polity, or about the insertion of worldly political organizing techniques into Baptist life, or about the naked connections between the SBC conservatives and the religious/political right. But the takeover conservatives won.

Those on the “moderate” losing side were often thrown on the defensive about their doctrinal purity as their opponents set the terms of the debate. Under attack, it became very important for the moderates to appear conservative on both theological and social issues. And a goodly number of them were in fact quite conservative if we are thinking about any reasonable spectrum one could draw of American religion as of 1985. (I know from liberals. I went to both Southern Seminary and Union Seminary. And Southern was nothing like Union.)

So in one sense, the split was a fight between two groups of conservative, white, Southern Baptists, one theologically/politically very conservative and one largely center-right moderate-conservative (with a small center-left caucus). The moderate side got in the habit of being very, very cautious about sending any signals that might validate the deadly SBC charge that they were “liberals.” This built an intrinsic caution into the DNA of most ex-SBC institutions founded in the wake of the schism, with everyone always looking over their “right” shoulders for incoming missiles. That tendency inhibited the formation and articulation of a constructive theological/ethical vision.

This also helps to explain to my younger readers, like my dear student friend Lesley-Ann Hix, why the ex-SBC world seems surprisingly sluggish on issues of gender (though the restrictions facing women in the SBC are a different matter altogether, and this must not be forgotten). The founding generation of ex-SBCers did not actually burn with a Christian feminist agenda, even though protecting space for supporting women in ministry was indeed important to many. The moderate Baptists mainly wanted the freedom to keep on doing what they had been doing — having the option of ordaining and appointing women to pastoral ministry, albeit in practice this was confined largely to associate pastor roles. A more thoroughgoing overturning of the largely male religious power structure has never been evident in any part of Baptist life in the South, though the 2013 appointment of Suzii Paynter as head of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship certainly is a dramatic step forward.

This same analysis may also speak to why ex-SBC institutions have generally made little progress on a Christian racial justice and reconciliation agenda, at least until recently. Turning largely white Baptist colleges, seminaries and churches into intentionally multiracial communities with shared interracial leadership was not on the agenda in 1990. Recent progress on aspects of a racial reconciliation agenda by the New Baptist Covenant initiative, supported strongly by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, is laudable. But the ex-SBC side did not launch with a terribly strong agenda of this type, and some are not enthused even today.

Baptist anti-creedalism also has played a role in how we got here. Precisely as the new SBC leaders moved toward greater creedalism, with closer attention to systematic theology and precise doctrinal formulations, leaders of the new ex-SBC institutions often refused to offer substantive theological affirmations. The survival of freedom of conscience in ex-SBC institutions has been hugely important, and I am personally deeply grateful. But sometimes it has been difficult to know what kind of theological vision our fellowships have been pursuing. As my mentor Glen Stassen has often said, freedom alone is not a sufficient foundation for Baptist identity.

Finally: the ex-SBC world has not produced a particularly robust body of theological writings. There are practical reasons for this, such as the shattering of earlier contexts for intellectual training and the diaspora of the Baptist intellectual leaders of that era. Still, that was 20 years ago, and despite a few wonderful exceptions in various fields, the Baptist intelligentsia is not really setting the world on fire. Not many Baptist professors (and pastors) write much, and few that do are read outside our subculture.

So there is something of a vacuum in Baptist intellectual life. To the extent that “our” people get their ideas about what it means to be a Christian from what they read, they are borrowing from other traditions. So some are reading Richard Rohr and some Shane Claiborne and some Dietrich Bonhoeffer and some Augustine and some Parker Palmer and some Tom Oden and some Barbara Brown Taylor and some Stanley Hauerwas and some N.T. Wright and some Frederick Buechner and some Ann Lamott.

And maybe some are reading liberationists and voices from previously marginalized communities. And some are reading bloggers like Rachel Held Evans. And a lot read whatever pops up on Facebook. And some aren’t reading much at all. Lacking leadership in our own fold, we default to the voices of others. I am not arguing for Baptist parochialism. I am arguing for much more intellectual firepower coming from our side.

I was asked by a correspondent why any of this matters. Because without a vision a people perish, and the mission of the church fails. The Christian faith is not effectively transmitted across generations or communicated to unbelievers. Our pulpiteers so often lack compelling vision. Our churches get outcompeted by congregations with greater passion, sharper identity and clearer theology. Within our congregations, hidden or poorly articulated theological assumptions bring division, especially when a community unaccustomed to thinking theologically has to do so in a crisis — or fails to do so.

These are not small problems. The faithfulness, and viability, of our part of the Christian community is at risk. I will offer some suggestions and observations concerning a way forward in a later column.

]]>Why ex-SBC Baptists tend to lack theological clarity and identity, how we got here and why it matters. Part II in a series.

Given the wide conversation sparked by my last column, about the lack of theological clarity and identity found in that slice of the U. S. Christian community that became ex-Southern Baptist, I follow up today with reflections on some of the sources of that lack of clarity. Again, I welcome crowdsourcing here, and I am fully aware of the limits of my own or any other individual’s perspective. I am also aware that ex-SBC life varies quite a bit across the vast expanse of the Mid-Atlantic, Southeast and Southwest. But here is my general analysis:

Great diversity concerning what it meant to be Southern Baptist long predated the convention schism of 1979-1991, especially given our commitment to congregational autonomy. This diversity was for a long time papered over by at least a limited shared identity provided by the Cooperative Program and the institutions and projects it funded. After the SBC split/takeover, the ex-SBC side never replaced the Cooperative Program and its institutions with anything similarly identity-producing. New ex-SBC institutions were, relatively speaking, weak and fragmented.

The convention controversy of 1979-1991 took a particular form that played a key role in later shaping ex-SBC identity or lack thereof. The “takeover conservatives” always said the fight was about theology, notably biblical inerrancy; their opponents mainly said it wasn’t about theology, but about Baptist polity, or about the insertion of worldly political organizing techniques into Baptist life, or about the naked connections between the SBC conservatives and the religious/political right. But the takeover conservatives won.

Those on the “moderate” losing side were often thrown on the defensive about their doctrinal purity as their opponents set the terms of the debate. Under attack, it became very important for the moderates to appear conservative on both theological and social issues. And a goodly number of them were in fact quite conservative if we are thinking about any reasonable spectrum one could draw of American religion as of 1985. (I know from liberals. I went to both Southern Seminary and Union Seminary. And Southern was nothing like Union.)

So in one sense, the split was a fight between two groups of conservative, white, Southern Baptists, one theologically/politically very conservative and one largely center-right moderate-conservative (with a small center-left caucus). The moderate side got in the habit of being very, very cautious about sending any signals that might validate the deadly SBC charge that they were “liberals.” This built an intrinsic caution into the DNA of most ex-SBC institutions founded in the wake of the schism, with everyone always looking over their “right” shoulders for incoming missiles. That tendency inhibited the formation and articulation of a constructive theological/ethical vision.

This also helps to explain to my younger readers, like my dear student friend Lesley-Ann Hix, why the ex-SBC world seems surprisingly sluggish on issues of gender (though the restrictions facing women in the SBC are a different matter altogether, and this must not be forgotten). The founding generation of ex-SBCers did not actually burn with a Christian feminist agenda, even though protecting space for supporting women in ministry was indeed important to many. The moderate Baptists mainly wanted the freedom to keep on doing what they had been doing — having the option of ordaining and appointing women to pastoral ministry, albeit in practice this was confined largely to associate pastor roles. A more thoroughgoing overturning of the largely male religious power structure has never been evident in any part of Baptist life in the South, though the 2013 appointment of Suzii Paynter as head of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship certainly is a dramatic step forward.

This same analysis may also speak to why ex-SBC institutions have generally made little progress on a Christian racial justice and reconciliation agenda, at least until recently. Turning largely white Baptist colleges, seminaries and churches into intentionally multiracial communities with shared interracial leadership was not on the agenda in 1990. Recent progress on aspects of a racial reconciliation agenda by the New Baptist Covenant initiative, supported strongly by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, is laudable. But the ex-SBC side did not launch with a terribly strong agenda of this type, and some are not enthused even today.

Baptist anti-creedalism also has played a role in how we got here. Precisely as the new SBC leaders moved toward greater creedalism, with closer attention to systematic theology and precise doctrinal formulations, leaders of the new ex-SBC institutions often refused to offer substantive theological affirmations. The survival of freedom of conscience in ex-SBC institutions has been hugely important, and I am personally deeply grateful. But sometimes it has been difficult to know what kind of theological vision our fellowships have been pursuing. As my mentor Glen Stassen has often said, freedom alone is not a sufficient foundation for Baptist identity.

Finally: the ex-SBC world has not produced a particularly robust body of theological writings. There are practical reasons for this, such as the shattering of earlier contexts for intellectual training and the diaspora of the Baptist intellectual leaders of that era. Still, that was 20 years ago, and despite a few wonderful exceptions in various fields, the Baptist intelligentsia is not really setting the world on fire. Not many Baptist professors (and pastors) write much, and few that do are read outside our subculture.

So there is something of a vacuum in Baptist intellectual life. To the extent that “our” people get their ideas about what it means to be a Christian from what they read, they are borrowing from other traditions. So some are reading Richard Rohr and some Shane Claiborne and some Dietrich Bonhoeffer and some Augustine and some Parker Palmer and some Tom Oden and some Barbara Brown Taylor and some Stanley Hauerwas and some N.T. Wright and some Frederick Buechner and some Ann Lamott.

And maybe some are reading liberationists and voices from previously marginalized communities. And some are reading bloggers like Rachel Held Evans. And a lot read whatever pops up on Facebook. And some aren’t reading much at all. Lacking leadership in our own fold, we default to the voices of others. I am not arguing for Baptist parochialism. I am arguing for much more intellectual firepower coming from our side.

I was asked by a correspondent why any of this matters. Because without a vision a people perish, and the mission of the church fails. The Christian faith is not effectively transmitted across generations or communicated to unbelievers. Our pulpiteers so often lack compelling vision. Our churches get outcompeted by congregations with greater passion, sharper identity and clearer theology. Within our congregations, hidden or poorly articulated theological assumptions bring division, especially when a community unaccustomed to thinking theologically has to do so in a crisis — or fails to do so.

These are not small problems. The faithfulness, and viability, of our part of the Christian community is at risk. I will offer some suggestions and observations concerning a way forward in a later column.

Stephen Reeves, recently named associate coordinator of partnerships and advocacy at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, says advocacy on behalf of others is a way to unite Baptists fragmented by race and tradition.

By Bob Allen

Baptists of different stripes can multiply their influence and foster reconciliation by working together to advocate on behalf of others in the public square, the newest member of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s leadership team said at the New Baptist Covenant Summit held Nov. 21-22 in Atlanta.

“At its core, I think advocacy is just speaking out for others, for someone else, putting their needs equal to your needs,” said Stephen Reeves, associate coordinator of partnerships and advocacy. “That’s about as a good a definition of the Golden Rule, of loving your neighbor as yourself, that I know of.”

Reeves, former public policy spokesman for the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission elected to the newly created post in September, said advocacy doesn’t have to be big or complicated.

“It doesn’t have to be lobbying Congress, although it can,” he said. “There’s a lot of ways to be an advocate and there’s a lot of ways you can work together on behalf of others and their well-being.”

“In the political realm that comes in stark contrast to lobbying with self-interest, which is the way most folks do it,” Reeves said. “It’s not really advocacy when it’s for your own benefit or for those that your represent. That’s a key difference here.”

Reeves says church-based advocacy begins by looking at the needs in the community. “Start by looking outward and becoming a voice for those folks you see in your community,” he advised.

Reeves, who in Texas worked with Catholics and other faith groups against predatory lending practices such as payday loans, said a real benefit of partnering with others in advocacy is “that you all become members of the same team.”

“In the political realm — whether it be City Hall or the State Capitol or the U.S. Capitol in Washington — the faith community is one constituent group,” he said. “When you’re lumped together like that and you’re working together, you’re suddenly on the same team in ways you’re not if you’re thinking about the church across town in terms of their membership and your membership, your denomination and your particular faction in Baptist life. Suddenly, when you take it to a different realm, you’re the faith community. You’re on the same team, and that’s a real benefit.”

Reeves said too often churches are hesitant to take up the advocacy role, for several reasons.

“In our context, there’s been a lot of bad examples of Baptists who have really turned folks off that we have to get over,” he said. “There’s the idea that somehow church/state separation prevents you from talking about these political issues and these systematic changes in church, and that’s not what that means. You can do that and should do that.”

Reeves said partnering with others in advocacy on behalf of others is beneficial to both the church and community, and when it happens people notice.

“When you walk in together arm-in-arm with a fellow Baptist that may look different than you do and maybe worships different than you at a different church, and then you work on behalf of someone else not even in the room, not only do the politicians, the city council or the mayor notice that, I think other folks in your community notice that,” he said. “It’s a way and a model that has not been done enough in terms of faith-based efforts in public policy.”

Reeves said it’s important to “pay attention to your comfort zone” when working with other groups. “People do advocacy in different ways,” he said. “When you decide to take on systematic change, somehow or another at some point it’s going to get real uncomfortable for you.”

“I might feel more comfortable walking into a senator’s office and sitting down and trying to talk about an issue and doing that kind of traditional lobbying,” he said. “I’m not as comfortable marching and chanting and holding signs, but that’s just another way to do advocacy. They can both be equally effective.”

Reeves encouraged churches in partnership to “use different tools and get out of your comfort zone.”

“I think that can lead to some real reconciliation work among those that you’re with, to know that you’re doing things that may not be the way you or your community typically does it but you’re doing it on behalf of others together, and that can be a real work of reconciliation,” he said.

Reeves said it does matter what issues that different groups take on together.

“For me the issue of predatory lending has been an incredibly good issue to take on,” he said. “It’s one that can unite folks that are very different. It’s not a partisan issue completely. There’s a lot of agreement. There’s some real biblical foundations and real Christian, ethical and moral considerations for how you treat the least of those among you and real matters of justice and fairness that when you work together on something like that reconciliation happens.”

It’s also an issue “that the church takes on whether they want to or not on a weekly basis,” he said, in the form of stewardship.

Stephen Reeves, recently named associate coordinator of partnerships and advocacy at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, says advocacy on behalf of others is a way to unite Baptists fragmented by race and tradition.

By Bob Allen

Baptists of different stripes can multiply their influence and foster reconciliation by working together to advocate on behalf of others in the public square, the newest member of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s leadership team said at the New Baptist Covenant Summit held Nov. 21-22 in Atlanta.

“At its core, I think advocacy is just speaking out for others, for someone else, putting their needs equal to your needs,” said Stephen Reeves, associate coordinator of partnerships and advocacy. “That’s about as a good a definition of the Golden Rule, of loving your neighbor as yourself, that I know of.”

Reeves, former public policy spokesman for the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission elected to the newly created post in September, said advocacy doesn’t have to be big or complicated.

“It doesn’t have to be lobbying Congress, although it can,” he said. “There’s a lot of ways to be an advocate and there’s a lot of ways you can work together on behalf of others and their well-being.”

“In the political realm that comes in stark contrast to lobbying with self-interest, which is the way most folks do it,” Reeves said. “It’s not really advocacy when it’s for your own benefit or for those that your represent. That’s a key difference here.”

Reeves says church-based advocacy begins by looking at the needs in the community. “Start by looking outward and becoming a voice for those folks you see in your community,” he advised.

Reeves, who in Texas worked with Catholics and other faith groups against predatory lending practices such as payday loans, said a real benefit of partnering with others in advocacy is “that you all become members of the same team.”

“In the political realm — whether it be City Hall or the State Capitol or the U.S. Capitol in Washington — the faith community is one constituent group,” he said. “When you’re lumped together like that and you’re working together, you’re suddenly on the same team in ways you’re not if you’re thinking about the church across town in terms of their membership and your membership, your denomination and your particular faction in Baptist life. Suddenly, when you take it to a different realm, you’re the faith community. You’re on the same team, and that’s a real benefit.”

Reeves said too often churches are hesitant to take up the advocacy role, for several reasons.

“In our context, there’s been a lot of bad examples of Baptists who have really turned folks off that we have to get over,” he said. “There’s the idea that somehow church/state separation prevents you from talking about these political issues and these systematic changes in church, and that’s not what that means. You can do that and should do that.”

Reeves said partnering with others in advocacy on behalf of others is beneficial to both the church and community, and when it happens people notice.

“When you walk in together arm-in-arm with a fellow Baptist that may look different than you do and maybe worships different than you at a different church, and then you work on behalf of someone else not even in the room, not only do the politicians, the city council or the mayor notice that, I think other folks in your community notice that,” he said. “It’s a way and a model that has not been done enough in terms of faith-based efforts in public policy.”

Reeves said it’s important to “pay attention to your comfort zone” when working with other groups. “People do advocacy in different ways,” he said. “When you decide to take on systematic change, somehow or another at some point it’s going to get real uncomfortable for you.”

“I might feel more comfortable walking into a senator’s office and sitting down and trying to talk about an issue and doing that kind of traditional lobbying,” he said. “I’m not as comfortable marching and chanting and holding signs, but that’s just another way to do advocacy. They can both be equally effective.”

Reeves encouraged churches in partnership to “use different tools and get out of your comfort zone.”

“I think that can lead to some real reconciliation work among those that you’re with, to know that you’re doing things that may not be the way you or your community typically does it but you’re doing it on behalf of others together, and that can be a real work of reconciliation,” he said.

Reeves said it does matter what issues that different groups take on together.

“For me the issue of predatory lending has been an incredibly good issue to take on,” he said. “It’s one that can unite folks that are very different. It’s not a partisan issue completely. There’s a lot of agreement. There’s some real biblical foundations and real Christian, ethical and moral considerations for how you treat the least of those among you and real matters of justice and fairness that when you work together on something like that reconciliation happens.”

It’s also an issue “that the church takes on whether they want to or not on a weekly basis,” he said, in the form of stewardship.

]]>Bob AllenSocial IssuesWed, 27 Nov 2013 13:26:51 -0500New Baptist Covenant enters work phasehttp://baptistnews.com/ministry/organizations/item/9040-new-baptist-covenant-enters-work-phase
http://baptistnews.com/ministry/organizations/item/9040-new-baptist-covenant-enters-work-phaseA broad coalition of Baptists from various organizations pledge to work together in their local communities.

By Bob Allen

A century and a half after the Civil War divided Baptists in America into separate congregations predominantly black and white, a diverse group of U.S. Baptists is exploring ways to cross boundaries of identity, doctrine and ethnicity to collaborate in community service.

In 2008, former President Jimmy Carter convened more than 15,000 people representing over 30 Baptist organizations in a gathering called the New Baptist Covenant. His desire was to bring unity to a faith tradition fragmented enough to inspire the old saying: “I don’t belong to any organized religion. I’m a Baptist.”

Subsequent national and regional gatherings were held to focus not on the various controversies that caused Baptists to separate over 150 years, but common values they all share. Now, said planners of a meeting of participants of previous gatherings convened Nov. 21-22 in Atlanta, it’s time to move beyond talk.

“We’ve come to the New Baptist Covenant before as groups and enjoyed the camaraderie, enjoyed the worship and enjoyed the time together,” Suzii Paynter, executive coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, said at a New Baptist Covenant summit meeting at First Baptist Church in Decatur, Ga. “Now we’re in the enlistment part. We’ve had the inspiration, and now it’s time for the perspiration.”

This year Baptists in four cities — Dallas, Birmingham, St. Louis and Atlanta — and others in the Northwest United States region will develop covenant partnerships to work together in their communities to advance Jesus’ mission described in Luke 4 as: “The Lord has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight for the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Over the next four years, planners have a goal of 100 “covenants of action” between sectarian Baptist groups differentiated for historical reasons that participants now regard as second-tier.

“The New Baptist Covenant is getting ready to go into a new phase,” said Hannah McMahan, national coordinator of the New Baptist Covenant movement. “We’ve gathered here to make Covenant an action and not a philosophy.”

McMahan, who participated in the first New Baptist Covenant gathering as a student at Wake Forest Divinity School, said the experience made her proud to be a Baptist.

“What we know as Baptists, when we are at our best, is that when we embrace diversity we are opened to God,” she said. “That’s where we find God.”

“Each of us carries a piece of God, and when we extend ourselves, when we stretch ourselves, and we look over to another horizon by reaching out a hand — by caring for someone, by listening, by being heard — through those relationships we’re not just loving each other. We’re loving God.”

Jeff Haggray, former pastor of First Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., and past executive director of the District of Columbia Baptist Convention, said Baptists “have always been a people of mission action.”

“Baptists are those who say that we would rather see a sermon than hear one any day,” Haggray said. “We are those who believe that it’s not important how high you jump when your spirit gets happy but how straight you walk when your feet hit the ground.”

“Even though we’ve been a people of mission action since our inception, so often mission action is constrained by the stuff of this world,” he said. “We’ve done mission action in our own silos of geography, of race, of Baptist ideology, of theology, of politics, of ethnicity and so forth. And we’ve been separated from each other by boundaries and by fences that are not of God’s making but of humankind’s making. Through these covenants of action we’re going to climb those fences.”

Paynter said the Baptist witness is “not just about what we say,” but a mutual commitment “toward shared values and common understanding of Baptist principles that bind us together.”

“We recognize the autonomy of each of our congregations and each of our organizations, so what do we have to prove?” she asked. “We have to prove that we can work together. We have to be a witness to what we can do together — not for our own devotion or for our own identity — but to what we can accomplish across the country for the betterment of God’s kingdom.”

]]>A broad coalition of Baptists from various organizations pledge to work together in their local communities.

By Bob Allen

A century and a half after the Civil War divided Baptists in America into separate congregations predominantly black and white, a diverse group of U.S. Baptists is exploring ways to cross boundaries of identity, doctrine and ethnicity to collaborate in community service.

In 2008, former President Jimmy Carter convened more than 15,000 people representing over 30 Baptist organizations in a gathering called the New Baptist Covenant. His desire was to bring unity to a faith tradition fragmented enough to inspire the old saying: “I don’t belong to any organized religion. I’m a Baptist.”

Subsequent national and regional gatherings were held to focus not on the various controversies that caused Baptists to separate over 150 years, but common values they all share. Now, said planners of a meeting of participants of previous gatherings convened Nov. 21-22 in Atlanta, it’s time to move beyond talk.

“We’ve come to the New Baptist Covenant before as groups and enjoyed the camaraderie, enjoyed the worship and enjoyed the time together,” Suzii Paynter, executive coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, said at a New Baptist Covenant summit meeting at First Baptist Church in Decatur, Ga. “Now we’re in the enlistment part. We’ve had the inspiration, and now it’s time for the perspiration.”

This year Baptists in four cities — Dallas, Birmingham, St. Louis and Atlanta — and others in the Northwest United States region will develop covenant partnerships to work together in their communities to advance Jesus’ mission described in Luke 4 as: “The Lord has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight for the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Over the next four years, planners have a goal of 100 “covenants of action” between sectarian Baptist groups differentiated for historical reasons that participants now regard as second-tier.

“The New Baptist Covenant is getting ready to go into a new phase,” said Hannah McMahan, national coordinator of the New Baptist Covenant movement. “We’ve gathered here to make Covenant an action and not a philosophy.”

McMahan, who participated in the first New Baptist Covenant gathering as a student at Wake Forest Divinity School, said the experience made her proud to be a Baptist.

“What we know as Baptists, when we are at our best, is that when we embrace diversity we are opened to God,” she said. “That’s where we find God.”

“Each of us carries a piece of God, and when we extend ourselves, when we stretch ourselves, and we look over to another horizon by reaching out a hand — by caring for someone, by listening, by being heard — through those relationships we’re not just loving each other. We’re loving God.”

Jeff Haggray, former pastor of First Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., and past executive director of the District of Columbia Baptist Convention, said Baptists “have always been a people of mission action.”

“Baptists are those who say that we would rather see a sermon than hear one any day,” Haggray said. “We are those who believe that it’s not important how high you jump when your spirit gets happy but how straight you walk when your feet hit the ground.”

“Even though we’ve been a people of mission action since our inception, so often mission action is constrained by the stuff of this world,” he said. “We’ve done mission action in our own silos of geography, of race, of Baptist ideology, of theology, of politics, of ethnicity and so forth. And we’ve been separated from each other by boundaries and by fences that are not of God’s making but of humankind’s making. Through these covenants of action we’re going to climb those fences.”

Paynter said the Baptist witness is “not just about what we say,” but a mutual commitment “toward shared values and common understanding of Baptist principles that bind us together.”

“We recognize the autonomy of each of our congregations and each of our organizations, so what do we have to prove?” she asked. “We have to prove that we can work together. We have to be a witness to what we can do together — not for our own devotion or for our own identity — but to what we can accomplish across the country for the betterment of God’s kingdom.”